This lesson shall take the tack that all born-again Christians are, in the true spiritual sense, “cured lepers”. We have all been plagued by sin’s rotting effects; some have nearly been eaten alive by sin – the most basic of all of man’s afflictions. We have all experienced the running sores of guilt and fear, the torment of putrefying, disfiguring envy and jealousy, the gnarly mutations of the spirit caused by obsessive lust and hatred. Our leprosy, painful and deadly, would be incurable, leaving us to a miserable, ugly fate were it not for the saving grace of Jesus and the love He proved for us at Golgotha. Because of this boundless love of Christ, snatching us off of the “isles of lepers”, many Evangelicals make the mistake of assuming that born-again Christians are fully vested with God’s righteousness from the instant they enter God’s kingdom; that there is no cleansing or washing needed for those “cured of leprosy”. But this is an unfortunate fallacy.

Yielding to the Spirit is Our Righteousness

While all who are saved by grace stand clean before God in the sense that they are forgiven of past sins and able to be in His holy presence because of the atoning blood of God’s only Son, we still need to seek after His righteousness. No one is made instantly perfect, holy, or righteous; that’s why Jesus issued the directive to be holy as God is holy and perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. If it was a ‘given’ then there would have been no necessity for Jesus to instruct us to become holy and perfect. New birth only marks the beginning of a process, lets us start with a clean slate so we may become holy and righteous in the sight of God. There is a difference between being forgiven and having a new start in Christ, and living a pleasing life toward God by living a daily life of faith in the Spirit. Just as babes start with milk and graduate on to meatier food, as they require it for the maturing and growing process, so Christians must get past the infantile stage and ingest meaty, substantial spiritual food if they hope to grow healthy and strong in Christ.

The Bible alerts us to the fact that there are degrees of quality among the personal lives of Christians. “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.” 2 Tim 2:20-21. We must not only do what is right, we must cease to do wrong. We must “flee youthful lusts” and associate with those of similar spiritual ambitions. “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 2 Tim 2:22. If attaining to righteousness did not involve a process or quest then Jesus would not have told His disciples to seek after it and certainly would not have suggested to us to hang around with and fellowship with those who seek God out of a pure heart. There is some truth to the old adage that we are known by those with whom we associate.

The seeking process is two-fold. The main aspect is to acquire the spirit of righteousness through yielding to the Holy Ghost. The second aspect is to shun our sin and shed the old man – to repent of all our carnal and earthly ways, including any lingering faith in man. True righteousness is only accomplished in us when we allow the Holy Spirit to have full reign over us, so that He gradually and completely gains control of our personal thoughts, or tongue, and our whole living and daily life. He can help us to pick up our cross if we will only yield to Him. We can be like the widow who cast in her ‘whole living’ and thereby so impressed Jesus. The law of the cleansing process for the leper delivered to Israel in the statutes of Leviticus was also designed to illustrate this great spiritual truth that we are to shun the flesh and be cleansed from our unrighteousness. This enlightening law of the leper and how it was given to us as a wonderful acting out of this marvelous principle of transformation from filthy sin to God’s righteousness, a process which requires yielding to the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance, which God hopes and expects every forgiven sinner to embark on and complete as he or she walks humbly and in reverence with Christ.

Being Born-Again is Merely the Beginning

It is fashionable in many Christian circles – no! more than fashionable – to think that man is inherently well-intentioned and that he is by character good-willed and of a loving nature, even though this is completely contrary to the message of the Scriptures.“There is none that is righteous, no, not one who doeth good.” Rom 3:10  But many Evangelicals and Pentecostals sincerely believe in man’s goodness. They believe that it merely needs to be unleashed from within. Forgetting what they were taught in the Bible, they fawn over the doctrines of Ecumenism, desiring to share in humanistic dreams and powers. They just don’t want to be left out. They fall for the good-looking charmer like a school kid swooning in the arms of the supposedly loving and progressive thinking ecumenical churches.

The first casualty of this spiritual infatuation with the “love” movement is the preaching of genuine righteousness and spiritual perfection. Power hungry, self-serving shepherds of the flock do not want to insist on righteousness from their people because it will empty pews and decimate bank accounts. They want influence in the community and the world of politics; they want recognition and acceptance from the sheep and they often want large salaries. It is a dubious thing when pastors are richer than the mean of their congregation, and numbers on the roll translate into money, human resources and personal prestige. And money, laborers and prestige translate into power.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by preaching “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” The first words preached by Jesus after He was tempted in the wilderness were “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Matt 4:17 Without repentance there can be no salvation for a person. It is simply not possible. We, therefore, must first admit our inherent nature to sin, ask for forgiveness for our particular sins, our rejection of God and, then, trust in the blood of Jesus to be the payment for those transgressions which we have committed with regularity from our youth against God and man. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Rom 3:23 For without this miraculous conversion from a fleshly, carnal being to a spiritual being there can be no abiding communion with God. He is a spirit and must be worshiped as a spirit. He will not abide in a stony dead place, but will reside in us only when our hearts have received life through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the forgiveness which only His shed blood can purchase. In short, we must be born-again.

Yet this new birth, so fundamental and necessary to eternal life, should never be viewed as the end-all or the complete fulfillment of being a pleasing son or daughter to Him. It is merely the first leg of that road less traveled, the beginning of the pursuit of giving our utmost for His highest. Our new birth is only our first step in seeking God’s righteousness when we are given the potential or, the “power to become the sons of God” John 1:12. If we were not to seek God’s perfect righteousness then why would scriptures like, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” Phil 2:12, and “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:” Heb 12:14, and  “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”  Matt 5:48, be stated so forcefully?

Law of Cleansing is a Process

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
   This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest:
   And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;
   Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:
   And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water:
   As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water:
   And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field. Lev 14:1-7

The law of the cleansing of the leper shows this very singular point: that there is one true spiritual process for having the righteousness of Christ grow in us. God, in three persons, is everywhere in this law of the cleansing of the leper; the Trinity completely dominates the process. The leper is not completely passive for he must do his part, but it is a concessionary role in which he must be actively submissive to God’s will. The law, as it was designed, provides a temporal and corporeal working model for necessary and true things that exist in the world of the unseen. The New Testament calls the law “a schoolmaster” and in this case, we are taught a most important spiritual lesson on the chalkboard of Mosaic Law.

It is clearly stated that the Old Testament rituals are meant to be nothing more than “a shadow of things to come” Col 2:17. If this law of the cleansing of the lepers was not meant by God to be a spiritual lesson then we would be compelled to admit that it is nothing short of bizarre. Consider it. A priest was to take two doves from a man who once had signs and symptoms of leprosy but no longer did, kill one dove in a clay pot while running water over it, take the other bird along with the scarlet, hyssop and cedar, dip them into the blood of the dead bird, sprinkle it seven times on the one-time leper and pronounce him clean. Then he was to take the living bird into, not just a field, but an open field and let it go free. Now ask yourself this question. Is God into meaningless gibberish and mystical rituals just to satisfy an urge to dominate and confuse people, or is there a greater meaning behind these curious acts? Because if this whole ritual does not signify a great spiritual truth of salvation then it is just an exercise of remote and strange incantations that signify nothing. But we know that God is a God of purpose and that He is practical, and always looking to teach us about the ways of salvation and the deep things of the redemption process. He tells Isaiah, “Come let us reason together. … though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson they shall be white as snow.” Isa 1:18 This ritual was created to show man the way to walk in the paths of Christ-like faith; to walk in the ways of a “leper” who is cleansed from his filth and can be “free as a bird”.

To begin with, we must acquaint ourselves with the symbols of this parabolic ritual.

1. The leper is you and me – a sinner whose sins, like the natural leper, have eaten away at his body, soul and spirit. (Rom 3:1, Rom. 7:18)
2. The priest overseeing the operation is the great High Priest and mediator between God and man: Christ. (Hebrews 2:17,3:1,4&5;1Tim. 2:5)
3. The birds represent the Holy Ghost and His ministry. (Matt 3:16, Mk 1:10, Luke 3:22 & John 1:32)
4. The scarlet stands for the blood of Christ. (Red dye)
5. The hyssop stands for the weakness of man. (Fragile plant)
6. The cedar is the strength of God. (Strong, enduring, the mightiest of plants)
7. The earthen vessel is the human condition, life in this temporal body of dust and clay.
8. Running water is symbolic of the Word and its cleansing powers and ability to quicken the Spirit of God within us.
9. The mixture of the above elements represents the process we undergo with these spiritual ingredients to have righteousness worked in us.
10. The open field represents the destination God has for us of freedom and complete emancipation from sin.

The symbolism of why there must be one dead bird and one living bird is much of the point of the law’s teaching and will become clear as the lesson unfolds.

First we take note that the leper is already clean when the process of ritual begins.

“This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest:
   And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;
   Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:” Lev 14:2-4

This process is not about curing him of his leprosy (sin) for the man is observed by the priest to already be free of symptoms of the disease. We, therefore, must conclude that this lesson in spiritual truth is targeted for those who already know God and have had their initial sin miraculously wiped away. They are already born again. So, this is not about evangelistic concerns of bringing people to Christ. The person or object of the ritual, the “leper”, is already cleansed and cured. We must conclude then that this, strictly speaking, is for those who are already engaged, to whatever degree, in a walk with Christ. Now, the former leper is to go through a purifying, process.

All of the elements are assembled. They include, first, the birds (the Holy Ghost and His ministry) and then the scarlet, cedar and hyssop; which are Christ’s atoning and powerful blood, the strength of God and the recognized weakness of the former leper, respectively. The ingredients being all in place before any action takes place is indicative of the fact that the man has been cured of leprosy (sin), as when one becomes born-again, and everything is spiritually in place making it possible for the process of cleansing and true righteousness to begin.

Is It Not A Very Odd Sacrifice?

You May Ask: Why Did An Innocent Animal Have To Die?

The Holy Spirit Indwells the “Clean Leper” 

“And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water:”

Notice that the first action is performed on command of the priest (Jesus) who has the bird inserted into the vessel of clay and slain. How strange and cruel this would seem if it did not have spiritual significance. It, however, points to the truth of the human condition and what drastic measures God must go to in the heart of man to get him cleansed and on the road to righteousness. A gentle little bird must be sacrificed to make a leper clean. The gentle bird here is none other than the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not the only one who ‘sacrifices’ Himself for us. For the Holy Spirit makes great sacrifice for us when he dwells within us. It is symbolic of the true sacrifice that God makes when He commits His Spirit to a life in and with us. This is the significance and spiritual meaning of first placing the bird within the vessel of clay and then slaying it once it is within it. Take note that the priest is the one who commands that the bird be placed within the vessel and sacrificed. The Holy Ghost – by the command of Jesus alone, for he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Ghost (Matt 3:11) – is placed inside the earthen vessel and that vessel is us. This sacrifice, for the bird is slain, is great and shows forth the immeasurable sacrifice the Holy Ghost has made by agreeing to dwell within these vessels of clay called men (Gen 1:26, 2:7, Job 13:12, 33:6 & 2 Cor 4:7). It is not spoken of enough concerning the sacrifice which the Holy Ghost makes each and every time He does the bidding of the High Priest and indwells a cured “leper”. For the Holy Spirit, and we emphasize HOLY, to become totally associated with these sons of dust and unclean sinners and to go everywhere, be everyplace and live the life of any mortal is a great sacrifice for a holy God. It would be like one of us sharing the existence and life of a scorpion, or an unclean dog, and being locked in their bodies, doing the things they do, living their fears, anxieties, lusts and ignorant, carnal desires. Christ’s atoning blood has made the unclean, clean, making it like a ‘former’ leper. The blood has made us a clean vessel and prepared the way for the Holy Ghost (the dove-bird) so that the vessel is clean enough for Him to place Himself within us. This is why no person can have the Holy Ghost placed within except he first be cleansed by the born-again blood of Jesus. The blood of Christ scours our soul and spirit and the Spirit can move in. But the Holy Spirit, in a sense, allows Himself to be slain. He is imprisoned. He dies to freedom and self for our sakes. This is so we are not alone; left without guide, comforter, teacher or soul-mate (John 14:16-18) while waiting for Jesus’s return from heaven where He now sits on the right hand of the Father waiting for that blast from the trumpet of the archangel.

What a sacrifice the Holy Ghost has made and we do not give Him due credit for this, but this lesson teaches us that we can and ought to do so. To see His willingness to indwell a cured leper as an extraordinary and incalculable sacrifice of love is to begin to give Him some honor and worship. As we shall see, it is the Spirit’s hope that we will set Him free and not keep Him confined in the depths of our human nature represented by the earthen vessel.

God hopes that the risk He is taking, this great sacrifice of indwelling flesh will not go for naught by having the Spirit languish in the earthen vessel, His power suffocated by neglect or an unresponsive, disinterested heart, His love shunned and forgotten by a carnal mind and thirst for the things of earth. Notice that the High Priest does not perform the actual sacrifice. He has someone else pour running water, or as the Scriptures call it elsewhere, “living” water, over the bird as it is being slain in the vessel. How curious, until we make the connection with the living Word. The water is the life-cleansing and dynamic power of the Word of God (Eph 5:26). The Holy Ghost is the one who performs the whole sacrifice of Himself and all that pertains to it, including the pouring out of the Word upon the sacrifice. The running water is also the regenerative power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the daily renewing brought by the indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost which is abundantly worked in us. Titus 3:5-6

The Spirit works this in us and performs the whole operation of liberation from sin in us Himself, for that is what the whole sacrifice is about, declaring the liberation and cleanliness of a former leprous sinner.

Though a sacrifice is made, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us does not die, but lives with vitality – if we will go out into the open air and set Him free. For the Spirit to live the Christian must go the next step in the process. He must concede to Him, yield with compassion to Him, not imprison His Will and power, but let Him have full range, fly free and be unrestricted.

A Spiritual Admixture Cleanses the Cured Leper

“As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water: And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean…”

The High Priest, you will observe, is still very much in charge of the whole process. He must remain in charge. Just as it would have been entirely inappropriate for the “cured leper” to wrench any part of the carefully prescribed process from the control of the priest, so it is wrong for any believer to think that the aspects of this spiritual process in Christ can be altered or manipulated. Now all ingredients must be brought together into one homogeneous and perfect spiritual mix. This is the hard part and the least likely to be understood or accepted by the “cured leper”. If we allow Him to do it, Christ will mix the power of His resurrected life, with faith in God, and ever decreasing reliance on ourselves to bring ever increasing righteousness in us. This brings an unavoidable dichotomy, a tension within our spirit. We are pulled to God and away from self. Christ will increase our faith to trust and believe God, will help us grow in grace so we can rely His strength rather than our own, so we may, as the Proverb says, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Prov 3:5-6  The verse which follows reinforces the other part of the mixture for righteousness, that we not rely on our own goodness or insightfulness for good. It says,”Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” Prov. 3:5-7 As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 1:9: “we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead”. Jesus used analogies to connect us to His cross so that we would understand that, like Him, we are to be “dead” to self. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Luke 9:23-24 and, “he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.” Matt 10:38 The scarlet ingredient in the sacrifice represents the power of Christ’s blood to save, forgive, deliver and free us to live a spiritually rich existence. The cedar represents the trust which Christ, who is “the author and finisher of our faith”, Heb 12:2 will encourage us with and provide for us. The hyssop is the death to self that is a recognition of our human limitations and fleshly weaknesses, whereby, we no longer trust in our own powers and weapons.

With these spiritual symbols, that is, the dead and the living bird, the scarlet, the cedar and the hyssop; acting upon and in union with one another God has shown the ultimate aim of forgiveness of sin and the cleansing power of the blood of salvation. It is the Holy Ghost, the blood of Christ, God’s strength and man’s humility, along with the High Priest (who ultimately is the Son of God, Jesus, who dips them into the blood of the sacrificed in their behalf. This act symbolizes that true righteousness can only be brought about in all actuality after the forgiven soul has yielded and submitted to being cleansed. it was a foreshadowing of the power of the Holy Ghost  when one submits to the baptism of the Holy Ghost (symbolic of the initial bird being placed in us (for we are called a vessel of the Holy Ghost in Scripture) and then us letting it be freed to have flight in the earth by releasing it by our will power to do His solitary work of good.

Then, and only then, can the four elements of righteousness: (1) the freeing power of the blood of Jesus (2) the power of the living presence of the Holy Ghost within us (3) the ability to believe and yield to the Spirit of God and (4) the denial of all aspects of self; blend perfectly and harmoniously together, combining in full force to begin to grow the fruits of God’s righteousness in a “cured leper” made spotless by Christ’s forgiveness. The act is begun by the High Priest who is the only mediator between God and man. It is conditional upon the reception of the Holy Ghost by the “jar of clay”, the Holy Ghost having “sacrificed” His holy and heavenly nature to inhabit the ‘earthen vessel’ of a leprous soul. The only way it can become clean. It is done seven times (signifying that it is a process accomplished fully over a period of time and that it does not take place overnight or in an instantaneous fashion through prayer, miracles or a simple one-time act of bowing submission. The priest sprinkles the mixture on the “cured leper”. When this is done, and only when this is done, does the priest pronounce the one-time leper clean. Notice, the priest does not pronounce the leper clean at the outset of the whole ritual when he first determines he is spotless and cured. It is only at the end of this remarkable and spiritual ritual that the human creature, cured of leprosy (sin), is finally called, clean.

One should now readily see that the process of seeking and gaining righteousness for the “cured leper”, the born-again Christian, is from beginning to end, all about the Holy Ghost. Only one thing remains in the process. We must let the Holy Ghost have His way; it is He who must be in total control if righteousness is to reach its greatest height in us. He must be set free in our hearts to have full reign over our life. He should be our guide, comforter and teacher. He should have His way at all times, and we should be ready and willing to unleash Him in every situation. The end result of this remote ritual, this otherwise strange law which comes to light only in the radiant and lucid beams of Christ’s understanding, and the Word as taught by the Holy Ghost, is for the living bird within us to be set free. This clearly means we are to allow the Holy Ghost to have reign. To let Him fly. It is for us, the ‘cured leper’ to: “… let the living bird loose into the open field.”

EOE’s Seven-Part Series:
Walking With The Spirit

1. Believing in The Spirit
2. Yielding to The Spirit
3. Obeying The Spirit
4. Trusting The Spirit
5. Standing in The Spirit
6. Living in The Spirit
7. Walking in The Spirit